It’s All for the Best??
Four dollars a gallon, headed towards five. What a blessing!
That’s what some would have us believe. Americans are cutting back on oil consumption! Mass transit reports surging ridership. Our joy is unbounded!
Imagine how delighted we will be when traffic related fatalities drop to nearly zero once we are all riding ox carts or pulling rickshaws!
Yet, it’s all for the best, some say.
Are these the same Pollyannas who, after examining a life wrecked by drugs, divorce and other unfortunate choices too numerous to mention, would exclaim it was all for the best, for it got them where they are now? Maybe they are even clergymen who extol the virtues of hard times to push people into the pews. “Nothing like war to bring people to their knees in prayer!”
Four dollar a gallon gas is not for the best. Families will lose homes because they can’t afford to get to work. Kids can kiss summer jobs goodbye because everybody is cutting down on eating out so they can pump more petrodollars into their tank. Lives are being wrecked by the hour.
Jesus did not say it was all for the best. “If anyone causes one of these little ones who believes in me to sin, it would be better for him not to have been born.” Sin (ours and others) eliminates the best. We are left with options ranging from poor to terrible. But he does promise that whatever happens to his believers in this life, he will turn it for their good.
Maybe a determined trust that he will still see us through this is all we can take way from our mugging at the pump.
–Don Pieper
To read more, go to www.gvelc.com
3 comments so far
Leave a reply
That headline, “It’s All For The Best,” is only subscribed to by the radical extremists who put the welfare of the Snail Darter and the Spotted Owl ahead of mankind. I don’t pretend to be a biblical scholar, but from what I know, God gave man dominion over the Earth and all things on the Earth. Is preservation of the Earth the responsibility of mankind? I’d say “yes,” but we have to inject some common sense into what we do.
For years and years, we have allowed our politicians to pass law after law to preserve the environment, never thinking ahead to the un-intended consequences. Now we are reaping the whirlwind….and complaining about it at the pump.
I don’t think we should blame God for any of this and I don’t think God will get us out of it either. Man does these things to himself.
If anyone wants the facts about pump prices, just go to: http://www.Energyfortomorrow.org.
Neil,
I think you missed my point. There are so many things in life that people mindlessly shrug off as being “for the best” and never take a look at their own personal actions in creating the trainwreck that their lives have become. God requires that we be good stewards of our life, the lives of those around us and our planet. “Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself,” hardly takes a PhD from Harvard Divinity School. When we fail to keep these commands, life becomes less than it was meant to be. History is full of examples of man getting himself into things. Fortunately, history also tells us how God has gotten man out of them.
Repentance, confession and forgiveness are not only to be seen in the church service, but in our actions in the world we live in.
O.K., maybe I did not really understand what you were getting at. I re-read your comments a few times and I now think I understand better what you were getting at….maybe.
Any way, I certainly agree that there are far too many people in this country not taking responsibility for their personal actions! What I see is them blaming everyone but themselves, even if they have to contrive a plausible denial. Our lawyers provide a perfect platform for escaping personal responsibility…..then even trying to collect from someone else.
Makes me wonder when God is going to say, “That’s it?”